rags
himself from his valley, and slowly and painfully levels an inch or two
for his use; just a little way here and there a green field has crept
up into the forest. The mountain-chin has one or two shaven spots; but
for the greater part his beard is still unshorn. All along he sends
down his boon to men. Everywhere you hear the scurrying feet of little
brooks, tumbling pell-mell down the rocks in their frantic haste to
reach a goal;--often a pleasant cottage-door, to lighten the burden and
cool the brow of toil; often to pour through a hollow log by the
wayside,--a never-failing beneficence and joy to the wearied, trusty
horses. From the piazza of the Waumbeck House--a quiet, pleasant,
home-like little hotel in Jefferson, and the only one, so far as I
know, that has had the grace to take to itself one of the old Indian
names in which the region abounds, Waumbeck, Waumbeck-Methna, Mountains
of Snowy-Foreheads--a very panorama of magnificence unfolds itself.
The whole horizon is rimmed with mountain-ranges. The White Mountain
chain stands out bold and firm, sending greeting to his peers afar.
Franconia answers clear and bright from the south-west; and from beyond
the Connecticut the Green hills make response. Loth to leave, we turn
away from these grand out-lying bulwarks to front on our return
bulwarks as grand and massive, behind whose impregnable walls we seem
shut in from the world forever.

A little lyric in the epos may be found in a side-journey to Bethel,--a
village which no one ever heard of, at least I never did, till now; but
when we did hear, we heard so much and so well that we at once started
on a tour of exploration, and found--as Halicarnassus quotes the Queen
of Sheba--there was more of it than we expected. The ride down in the
train, if you are willing and able to stand on the rear platform of the
rear car, is of surpassing beauty. The mountains seem to rise and
approach in dumb, reluctant farewell. The river bends and insinuates,
spreading out to you all its islands of delight. Molten in its depths,
golden in its shallows, it meanders through its meadows, a joy forever.
Bethel sits on its banks, loveliest of rural villages, and gently
unfolds its beauties to your longing eyes. The Bethel House,--a large
old-fashioned country-house, with one of those broad, social
second-story piazzas, and a well bubbling up in the middle of the
dining-room--think of that, Master Brooke!--a hotel whose landlor